


don't you worry you've got to an age (all my friends are falling in love)

by devereauxing



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 01:34:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21066587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devereauxing/pseuds/devereauxing
Summary: “you look like you’ve been stood up! why’re you sitting around looking miserable and making eyes at that beanpole of a waiter if you haven’t been stood up?”in which john just wanted to eat breadsticks





	don't you worry you've got to an age (all my friends are falling in love)

**Author's Note:**

> day two of joger week, prompt: "... who the fuck are you?"

The waiter, Sean, waved a bottle of wine at him tantalisingly. John glared at him and took a defiant sip of his water.

Sean laughed before ducking off to help seat a rowdy family of five who were insisting to the hostess that no, they didn’t _care _if the booths only sat four, they could squeeze in.

He ducked a quick look at his phone: eight-thirteen.

Ronnie was late. Again.

The problem with being the typical archetypal single best friend duo for much of your adult life was that once one of you actually shacked up with someone things all went… a little topsy turvey.

It wasn’t that he was _lonely_, persay. It was just that well… he’d never really wanted for a relationship because Veronica had always just sort of been there. A romantic relationship had always sort of felt like the kind of effort he just didn’t need to put it, not while he had Veronica there. Sex could be found via other avenues, but Veronica just seemed to meet all of his emotional requirements and, well, he’d thought it was the same for her.

Obviously he hadn’t thought that neither of them would ever enter a serious relationship, it’s just.

He’d always just kind of thought… maybe next year.

Well, next year had come at last about six months back and now Ronnie and Chrissie were talking about moving in together while John just sort of lingered trying to not give away how perturbed he was by the _adult-ness _of the situation.

Sean appeared at his elbow with no warning and deftly poured him a glass of wine. “Ah,” he chided when John went to protest. “On the house. At the very least it’ll make her feel a little bit guilty for making you wait again.”

“I don’t want to make her feel guilty,” John grumbled.

He did.

“Well, maybe I do,” Sean said conspiratorially with an over the top wink before he hustled away.

John gulped the glass down in three swallows and reminded himself that no matter how receptive the bloke seemed, nor how seemingly desperate for affection he had become, he was _not _allowed to sleep with one of the waitstaff from the only Italian restaurant in a two mile radius that made anywhere near decent gnocchi without a price hike that made his eyes water.

Sean looked back at him. John hastily lowered his gaze to the specials menu.

“Oh, thank fuck!”

As quickly as he’d looked down, John looked back up. A blonde haired man he vaguely recalled seeing around once or twice before had thrown himself into Ronnie’s seat looking flushed.

“You’ve been stood up, right?” he said lowly, leaning over the table and into his space. John leaned back. “God, please tell me you’ve been stood up.”

“Uh, no,” John stammered confusedly, eyes darting around as if he would find Ronnie waiting, camera in hand to catch his gobsmacked expression.

The man groaned, shoving his utterly inappropriate — given the situation — sunglasses up off of his nose and into his hair. “Fuck,” he groaned, shoving a hand into his open collar. “You look like you’ve been stood up! Why’re you sitting around looking miserable and making eyes at that beanpole of a waiter if you haven’t been stood up?”

John hastily leaned back in, swatting at the man’s other hand as he went to steal one of the breadstick’s Sean had left him earlier. “I’m not— Sean’s not— Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

“So you have been stood up,” he replied, an unattractively smug smile on his face. “Roger,” he tacked on belatedly, saluting him with the breadstick he had successfully pinched.

“Charmed,” John snarked, bristling. “I’m sure.”

Roger grinned and went to respond before, upon seeing something behind John, he suddenly ducked down. “Don’t look around,” he hissed, tugging his hand free from his shirt to grab at the front of John’s jumper when he went to do just that. “God, bad taste in men _and _can’t follow instructions? Don’t try speed dating.”

“I don’t have bad taste in men!” John insisted, a tad too loudly for the environment.

The family of five, somewhat questionably successfully stuffed in the four seater booth, turned to gawk at them. Roger, apparently not completely immune to societal standards of acceptable behaviour, let go of his jumper slowly when it became apparent that John wasn’t about to whip his head around to check out whatever it was that had Roger attempting to hide behind the bulk of his shoulder like a small child playing hide and seek behind a pair of curtains.

“I don’t have bad taste in men,” John repeated, hushed this time.

Roger gave him a look that was much too pitying given the fact that he was hunched over a stolen breadstick at the table of a complete stranger for reasons hitherto unknown. “I’m sure he’s got a great personality,” he intoned sardonically.

John went to argue before closing his mouth with a click. “Can you,” he started, tired all of a sudden. He was more than ready to call the night a bust and head home to wait for Ronnie’s inevitable _oh shit _text with a bottle of wine that cost significantly less than thirty quid. “Just fuck off? My life is, apparently, sad enough as it is. I really don’t need some random bloke narrating just how shit my night has turned out.”

He went to stand but Roger grabbed his arm before he could, fingers closing around his wrist with surprising gentleness. “No, please!” he pled, all wide baby blue eyes and apologetic graces. “‘M sorry, really. I just—” he cut himself off to dart a surreptitious glance over John’s shoulder. “My _ex _is here.”

John paused. Roger merely stared at him as if this was explanation enough.

“Okay, well, that sucks for you,” John said with a shrug, prying Roger’s fingers from around his wrist one by one. “Sorry about that. Have a good night.”

Roger’s mouth dropped open with surprise. “What! You can’t just— you don’t _understand_,” he moaned, letting John go to fold gracelessly over the table like a puppet whose strings had been cut loose.

The dramatic nature of it all was enough to give him a stay of execution as John wavered. The family of five was, once again, enjoying their free entertainment.

“I wouldn’t walk away from him at _my _table,” John heard the mother whisper-shout to her teenage daughter who appeared stuck been abject mortification at the volume with which her mother had spoken and complete agreement.

Roger, until now laid face down upon the table, looked up just enough to send a flirty wink their way.

“Right, no,” John decided, standing at last. “I’m off. Good luck with your… issues.”

“Okay, okay,” Roger said, scrambling to reach for him again. “Look, okay, my ex is here with her new fella—” John was disheartened to note that he was disappointed to find out the guy was probably straight. He knew he’d been stooping low by checking out Sean, but Jesus Christ. Did he have absolutely no standards? What next — was he going to start blushing when the bus driver said hello in the mornings? “And I just came in to order takeout! That’s it! And if she sees me here by myself she will totally invite me over—”

“What?” John interrupted. “I don’t—”

“I’m really sorry, but can you _please _sit down.”

John sat down heavily with a sigh, glanving pointedly at where Roger was once again holding onto his wrist. Roger let him go hastily, holding his hands up in surrender.

“She will _totally _invite me over,” Roger repeated looking genuinely distressed at the idea. “And like, it was a good break up, you know? We’re _friends _but we’re not, like, friend-friend’s, right? Like, we’re not there yet.”

John blinked across at him. “Yeah,” he said shortly. “I’ve got no clue what you just said.”

Roger groaned, letting his head fall into his hands. “I’m fucked,” he moaned lowly to himself. “I’m going to have to walk back over there and eat _lasagne _with her and whatshisface. And then,” he continued, looking up as he worked himself into a tizzy. “Then! Fuckin’ Saul? Your waiter! He’s going to come over and ask if we want dessert!”

“Sean,” John murmured.

To their left the teenage girl was now clearly videoing them.

“Sean! Even worse!” Roger exclaimed, albeit quietly. “Who goes around in this day and age with a name like fuckin’ _Sean_?”

“Your name,” John interrupted, feeling bemusedly entertained by his outburst. “Is Roger. I don’t think you have room to judge.”

“I bet he’s not even Irish,” Roger rambled on unabated, talking over him. “So really it should just be John. Did you know that? Sean is just John! What a _dick_,” he hissed, hunched over the place setting and glaring over at Sean who was watching them from near the hostess station — where he’d been hovering since Roger’s appearance — with concern.

“... And he’s going to ask if you want dessert?” John prompted, like a man who in the midst of a nuclear meltdown begins pushing buttons he’s always been vaguely intrigued by because, well, things can’t get much worse and he wants to see what will happen.

“Dessert!” Roger crowed, jabbing a finger in his direction. “Because it’s a date! You always get dessert on a date, and—” he cut himself off, slumping back in his chair looking suddenly taken aback. “I just realised I don’t know your name,” he said out of nowhere, the wind seemingly knocked out of his sails by the revelation.

“John.”

“Oh my god,” Roger said, eyes wide with something nearing concern; the subject of his ex and their awkward potential for dessert seemingly abandoned for the moment. “You _definitely _can’t fuck Sean, then.”

“I’m not going to fuck Sean!” John nigh on shouted, amusement warming his breast against his better judgement.

Belatedly he remembered where he was.

Roger was watching him with his bottom lip tucked between his teeth to keep from laughing aloud, eyes nearly shining with mirth.

“Oh, fuck,” John groaned, a smile on his face that he couldn’t quite budge despite his embarrassment. “I can never come here again.”

“Yeah,” agreed Roger, blatantly turning around to check out Sean’s reaction. Sean, the poor bloke, was hightailing it to the kitchen as fast as his feet could carry him. “Probably not, mate. Better make it a good last supper then, hey?”

“What?” John choked out, disbelief curdling at the back of his throat in such a manner that it was almost laughter. “I can’t _stay_!”

“John,” Roger said seriously, reaching out to clasp both of his hands with his own. He leaned in until they were much too close for John’s comfort: “If you make me go over there and eat _tiramisu_ with Dom and her bloke, I swear to God, I will hunt you down. I will find you. My best mate is like, a wizard, when it comes to social media search functions. I will find you, and I _will…_”

John waited expectantly as Roger trailed off.

Roger appeared to think about his threat some more.

“Well?” John prodded, straining to keep the appropriate amount of eye contact. Eye contact, he found, gave him anxiety. It was something that he didn’t struggle with until he became aware of it, and once he was aware he couldn’t help but obsess over whether or not he was doing it right. Like when he thought about his own breathing, awareness of the function caused him to catastrophize into a spiral of self consciousness.

The difference was, of course, that at least with breathing only he was aware that he was fucking it up when he ended up holding lungfuls of air for seconds too long and had to gulp in quick pant-pant-pant’s to catch back up with himself. With eye contact, however, there was another person who could judge whether the intimacy of the act was within the correct parameters of social convention.

John glanced away.

“I was going to threaten to murder you,” Roger admitted, sounding somewhat abashed. “But I don’t think we know each other like that just yet, so I thought better of it.”

“How polite of you,” John deadpanned, gaze rising again wholly without his permission.

Roger grinned, “That’s me. A right proper gentlemen.”

John snorted, an inelegant thing that had him blushing almost as soon as it was over. “You’re buying then?” he blustered to cover his flush, tugging his hands from Roger’s own.

Roger blinked and looked down, as if he had forgotten that he’d been holding onto him.

“It depends,” he simpered, fluttering his eyelashes obnoxiously. “Is your taste in food as bad as your taste in waite— Oh.”

Sean was stood next to them looking incredibly awkward as he fidgeted with his notepad and pen, eyes directed firmly at the wall opposite himself. “Hi, guys!” he chirped faux-politely with an almost scary smile affixed to his face.

John gave Roger a sidelong look, only to find himself on the receiving end of the same. He hastily pressed a fist to his mouth in an attempt to stifle the laughter that so desperately wanted to escape.

“Just a heads up,” Sean continued in his perfect sing-song customer service voice. “That the kitchen is taking last call now, so it’s your last chance to order for the night. Otherwise, I can bring you the bill for your wine?”

Roger glanced at him again before biting his lip. “Uh,” he began, hesitantly, before rolling his shoulders. “Just the cheque is fine, thanks. We’re good.”

John whipped his head around: “Wait, what?”

Sean had already turned to hustle away.

“Hey, no!” John scowled at his retreating back. “We’re ordering.”

“Really, John,” Roger said insistently, ignoring Sean hovering unsurely beside them. “Dom’s probably got her food and everything by now—”

“She has,” Sean interjected.

“Was I talking to you?” Roger asked waspishly before turning to John again. “Sorry, I’m not usually rude to waiters, I just really don’t like this guy.” John shrugged; his own estimation of Sean had lowered as the night had progressed, he could admit. Roger continued: “I can probably make my escape with, like, most of my dignity.”

“Eh,” John hedged, with a guilty grimace. “You’ve had a piece of rosemary from the breadsticks stuck between your front teeth this whole time.”

“I can escape with _some _of my dignity.”

“Sorry,” Sean interrupted, impatience infringing on the pepiness of his faux happy tone. “But are you going to order or not?”

“We’ll get the fucking gnocchi,” John snapped, snatching the specials menu’s from the table and shoving them into Sean’s hands. “A bottle of the house red, and _yes _we will be wanting the dessert menu.”

Sean huffed and stormed off; in the booth across the room the mother, who had been making extraordinarily slow work of her own dessert as she watched the two of them, shot John a double thumbs up.

Roger was looking across at him with something akin to astonishment.

“I don’t,” John told him primly, picking up his napkin to spread across his lap. Roger copied him. “Have bad taste in men.”

Roger let out a small, shocked sounding laugh. “Oh my god,” he choked, watching him with wide eyes. “He’s _so _going to spit in our food.”

“Probably,” John admitted, beginning to laugh anew himself. “Fuck, I really can’t ever come here again, can I?”

“No,” said Roger, laughing even harder. “No, you can’t.”

His phone vibrated next to him, lighting up with the notification of a new message; and another; and another.

John dabbed ineffectually at the moisture which had gathered under his eyes during his laughter, trying to regain control of himself. “I really like the gnocchi here,” he sighed, swiping to open his phone. He attempted to affect an appropriately mournful tone — the gnocchi _was _really good — but it was ultimately ruined by the wide grin he couldn’t quite wipe from his face.

_omg babe im so sorry i thought we were meeting tomorrow?????_

_can we do tomoz instead????_

_im so so so so so sorry_

_honest feel like such a shit friend :(_

“Well,” Roger said, leaning in once more. His eyes darted between John’s own and his lips, and John couldn’t think on anything more than that. “I might know a place? Nearly went there tonight, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Pretty glad I didn’t, though.”

_All good, no biggie._

_Got plans tomorrow night though :)_

_Maybe next week?_

“Well, I did ask for the dessert menu.”

**Author's Note:**

> most of this was written on a bus. unedited as most of my shit is. apologies. (@sarinataylor on tumblr)


End file.
